Harper Lee designs Jem and Scout to learn from their father, Atticus in her historical novel To Kill a Mockingbird. She uses the conflict of growing up during the Great Depression in the south, a place full of prejudice, which Atticus is trying to steer the kids away from, as he calls prejudice Maycomb’s disease. At the beginning of the novel the kids have very childlike thinking, a good example is thinking whoever lived in the rundown Radley house was evil, they assumed this based on the very little information they had. Towards the middle is when a situation arises which gave Atticus the opportunity to teach them how to succumb to disease, by listening to all sides of a story. Then at the end, is when Harper Lee shows the reader that Scout
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Ewell is the incarnation of everything wrong with Maycomb racism, extreme prejudice, drunkenness, and vengeance. The first instance Lee shows Bob as a racist character, is when he says “I seen that nigger ruttin on my Mayella”(196). Lee explicitly had Bob say this to show that he sees black people as animals, and only deserve to be called by a racial slur. Unfortunately, there are people who still think like Bob, a case taking place in 2007 had a hispanic man who was convicted of allegedly groping two teens, but one white juror had prejudice against his ethnicity “mexican men believe they could do whatever they wanted with women"(NPR). It is crucial to realize that even though this trial didn’t take place in the south during the Great Depression, some white people still have prejudice against those not of their own race, especially when it comes to how they act with women. In the light of Bob being vengeful, Lee clearly had a reason for Bob having his reputation destroyed during the trial “he told Atticus he would get him, if it took the rest of his life”(247), this is important to note because the kids have only seen good citizens of Maycomb, so they have a form of prejudice, because they immediately decide that anyone in Maycomb is a morally good
Ewell is the incarnation of everything wrong with Maycomb racism, extreme prejudice, drunkenness, and vengeance. The first instance Lee shows Bob as a racist character, is when he says “I seen that nigger ruttin on my Mayella”(196). Lee explicitly had Bob say this to show that he sees black people as animals, and only deserve to be called by a racial slur. Unfortunately, there are people who still think like Bob, a case taking place in 2007 had a hispanic man who was convicted of allegedly groping two teens, but one white juror had prejudice against his ethnicity “mexican men believe they could do whatever they wanted with women"(NPR). It is crucial to realize that even though this trial didn’t take place in the south during the Great Depression, some white people still have prejudice against those not of their own race, especially when it comes to how they act with women. In the light of Bob being vengeful, Lee clearly had a reason for Bob having his reputation destroyed during the trial “he told Atticus he would get him, if it took the rest of his life”(247), this is important to note because the kids have only seen good citizens of Maycomb, so they have a form of prejudice, because they immediately decide that anyone in Maycomb is a morally good